


A Man So Desired

by Emby_M



Series: One Party, Three Views [1]
Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Drag, Headcanon-heavy, Lavish Parties, M/M, Two Idiots fall in love while one's boyfriend looks on in amusement, You're just going to have to read the notes on this one for the premise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 13:59:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17346494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emby_M/pseuds/Emby_M
Summary: "Despite the throngs of beautiful rich folks, for Dutch, Hosea might as well have been the only man in the world."-Trelawny watches Hosea and Dutch flirt, while preparing for a fun and raunchy afterparty that Dutch is most certainly not invited to.Part of a series of three. Read the others for Dutch's and Hosea's viewpoints.





	A Man So Desired

**Author's Note:**

> The Premise:  
> See "Your Money or Your Life" for the full meeting backstory (the third version, after the page break).  
> \- Hosea and Dutch have been exceedingly close since their first meeting, despite Dutch's engagement to Susan Grimshaw and Hosea's continuing relationship with Josiah Trelawny and his marriage to Bessie Matthews.  
> \- Bessie is 100% a lesbian, and they beard for each other. She has a lover named Sarah, who looks a lot like Hosea. (They aren't related, even though people think they are.)  
> \- They (Hosea and Bessie) plan parties for the LGBTQ community where they live. The community is surprisingly extensive.  
> \- Josiah and Susan both know Dutch is bi/pansexual, but neither Hosea nor Dutch know. Dutch thinks everyone's equally attracted to all genders.  
> \- Trelawny and Hosea are pretty sexually active (and adventurous, at that) and aren't particularly monogamous. Their relationship is low-key and open, but very nice for them.  
> \- Hosea went to Yale and was/is in the Skull and Bones Society. "Tapping" is how they nominate new members.  
> \- The fellows at these parties wear green carnations in their lapels to indicate if they're open to being tapped.  
> \- Hosea is in his thirties here, Trelawny and Dutch are in their twenties.  
> \- Dutch is around 6'5" (196 cm).
> 
> Hopefully that fills you in. If you have questions, feel free to ask. Kudos and comments are always appreciated!

The party is in full swing, folks mingling gaily, everyone quite stunning in the light of the chandeliers.

"Are you ready, my young friend?" Hosea says, smiling.

"Certainly," he smiles.

Hosea reaches over to him, carefully fixing his bowtie and his hair, before very slowly and deliberately tapping his shoulder with two fingers, like always.

He reaches over, caressing the older man's cheek, and returns the gesture.

Their eyes meet, and stay met for a long enough moment it sizzles- and then Hosea breaks, turning out to the party at large.

For a few moments, they part. There's Alphonse -- they'd been meaning to have him with them for quite a while. He gets the two fingered tap.

He'll tell Hosea later how prettily he'd flushed over those charming freckles, nearly the color of his hair.

James B. gets a tap -- his suit grazes his slim and elegant form particularly well tonight. Eddie, a perennial favorite, gets a tap. The last time they'd had him he was an excellent guest, impassioned and inquisitive in all the right ways.

Wally and Dickie, a match set, get a tap, of course. They had certain talents both apart and together which impressed them all. Plus they were so pretty, Dickie and all his deep swarthiness against Wally's bright fairness -- very lovely.

But it's only when he notices the giant in the room -- and really, there was only one person it could be -- that he sways over.

Josiah catches the moment Hosea taps him from the very shoulder, and is beside Hosea when Dutch, the big monster, only a year older than him and yet nearly double his height (it feels), calls, "Mister Matthews?"

Hosea looks back with shock. More shock than even Josiah'd seen before on that sharp, pretty face.

"Mister Van Der Linde?" Hosea warbles, looking around wildly.

That's right. Dutch and Hosea were doing... all that. Dutch was flirting with Hosea, even though he had a fiance in Susan Grimshaw -- good for her, Josiah thinks, all that man. Hosea barely noticed, but also definitely was reciprocating.

Even as his lover, Josiah doesn't feel particularly bothered by this thing they were doing. He just likes to see them both squirm.

"I didn't think I'd see you tonight," Dutch says, smiling widely. It's remarkable that Hosea hasn't figured it all out when the man reacts like that only at seeing him.

"No, I didn't either -- what are you doing here? You know this is a private occasion?" Hosea stutters.

Josiah smiles, sidling up beside him and slipping a hand around his waist, saying nothing.

"Oh, it is? Susan said there was a party I might be interested in, wouldn't let me say no," he laughs, "So here I am. Nice party, lots of lovely folk."

"Oh, well, thank you. Um. You haven't said anything to the women here, have you?"

"Not yet, no. Nothing more than greetings."

"You tapped him, ah, angel?" Josiah interrupts, fondling Hosea's hip.

A very pretty flush flits across Hosea's cheeks.

"Tapped?"

"Oh, sure," Hosea laughs, "It's a thing we used to do at Yale."

"What for?"

"Over there it was club membership; here -- it's, uh," Hosea pauses, apparently unable to say it, "invitations to an afterparty."

An afterparty. Yeah, that is a way to put it, but it leaves out quite a few details. Like the fact it's really more an orgy.

Hosea Matthews and he liked to invite only the prettiest gentlemen -- all the gentlemen here who love other men, who would go home with their wives who love women -- back to a very lovely room upstairs in this meeting hall, and have each other, have them all, let them all have each other in an altogether joyous but thoroughly ribald spectacle.

Josiah glances askance at the still-flushed Hosea.

"Sorry, dear, I thought you were someone else. So I'll have to rescind," Hosea says, gesturing loosely.

"Why can't I come?" Dutch says, "An afterparty sounds fun."

"It's a- it's for business."

Dutch pouts. "I'm part of the business."

"You aren't part of this business, Dutchy," Josiah says, a smirk spreading across his face. He pulls Hosea close, cheek to cheek almost, and Hosea barely notices.

Dutch notices, though, staring at Josiah like a stare could bring down heavenly wrath. From way up there, seven inches above his head, it might be possible.

"It's a bit of like a symposium!" he says. Josiah glances askance at him, wondering thoroughly if he means generally or rather more specifically the types of symposia men of the classics got up to these days, of radicals draped atop one another, content to while their lust without women. "Lots of... lots of things unsuitable for someone your age."

"Trelawny's younger than I am," Dutch says, gesturing rudely to him. Josiah's smile spreads wider.

Hosea seems to notice him the first time just then. "Trelawny's my partner, even if he's young."

Dutch tries to hide his displeasure, but it doesn't do anything.

"Sorry, Pieter, I can't have you coming to this. It's not your milieu," Hosea says, very finally, patting the breast of Dutch's suit.

"You're rescinding a tap, then?" Josiah says, smiling.

"Yes, I am-" Hosea shuts his mouth quick, and looks at him with wide eyes and low brows, "Oh no."

"Oh yes. You know the penalty for rescinding a tap."

They'd put it in place when they started the game, to make sure they two were being -- considerate of their choices. If you couldn't untap someone without a penalty, then there were bound to be a lot of poor choices and rather quite a few hurt feelings if you did untap someone. No, their society here needed the fear of the penalty to run smoothly, to not alienate anyone, to keep things sporting and above all, kind.

Hosea had come up with the concept of a penalty, but it had been Trelawny who came up with the actual content. How much had Hosea laughed, when he'd spun the rules into Hosea's firm, slender neck!

Hosea sighs and gestures Dutch down. Dutch stoops, and when he does, Hosea's graceful hand cups his neck and his well-formed lips press, gently, against the hollow of his jaw.

"There, that's half, then," he says, shooting a mean look to Josiah, then turning back up to Dutch, "I'll be back soon. Just have to go prepare for the other half of the forfeit."

Dutch isn't listening though, looks nearly catatonic from that gentle, delicate kiss, slings his eyes from a middle distance to Hosea's face like a steel marble dropped into a bowl. He says something that could be "okay" but is hardly formed enough to even let it be.

"You know, it is getting late, why don't you go home for the night, ah? Take a cab home and tuck into bed?" Hosea says, smoothing Dutch's lapels.  
Again a sound that might be "sure" but might be nothing but gibberish from a lovestruck man.

So Hosea waves to them, and grabs his wife and her companion -- a near perfect replica of Hosea, but female; they were always good for each other except the pesky issue of gender -- before darting into the side room. 

"Don't go, lad," he says to Dutch, who manages to blink the stars out of his eyes and rehinge his jaw.

"Wasn't planning to," he mumbles, staring despondently at the side door. Despite the throngs of beautiful rich folks, for Dutch, Hosea might as well have been the only man in the world.

"You're going to want to see the forfeit through to the end."

Dutch blinks more, and stands back to his full height. "I'm getting a drink."

Josiah shrugs and continues on with the process of tapping, always keeping an eye out for the giant beast who so obviously was in love with Josiah's own boyfriend and yet didn't even know he wasn't straight.

Tonight's afterparty would be fun indeed, if Hosea wasn't too preoccupied with the concept that maybe Dutch was... proportional. Rather long and thicksome besides.

He hopes the humiliation of the forfeit will knock him out of those thoughts. Although very possibly it was never an issue, because as bright and smart as Hosea was (he was at Yale, for Christ's sake) he was rightly awful at realizing the feelings of one boy who he'd changed the life of.

Dutch downs a drink or two before the side door opens again and a vision of Queen Mab, and an exceedingly tall one at that, emerges.

He is so glad that Hosea is the one to do the forfeit first. He'd have looked godawful, all gangling legs of youth, in that get-up. Never mind Hosea's already delicate waist cinched quite tight with a corset of some make under layers and layers of translucent, ethereal chiffon. The wig, which they had prepared for this, is not present on his head, but somehow the effect is even more charming, a Queen Mab with a close crop of gingery-blonde hair.

With him next to Sarah, Bessie's lovely companion, Dutch is staring like he's seeing double. Sarah and Bessie help Hosea up onto the musician's stage.

With a voice befitting an operatic singer in its clarity and volume, Hosea calls out to the crowd "Ladies and Gentlemen, Esteemed guests! I appear to you now, the arbiter of good nights and joyful, cheerful throng, your delighted host, the Fairy Queen Matthews."

The crowd peals with laughter, delighted in Hosea's pretty appearance and speech. Even if he wasn't raised rich, he had a lot better deportment than the kids Josiah grew up knowing, those kids who knew wealth and cruelty and not anything else.

Hosea must have put on cosmetic -- his skin shines, his eyelashes longer than usual. The men they had tapped look up at him with a certain hungry, delighted look, eager to free Hosea's charming form from that swath of chiffon, smear that pretty kohl around his eyes, lap the stain from his now-reddened lips and replace it with a reddening of their own doing.

But the strongest want emanates from Dutch, standing shocked with a glass in his hands. Another man might think it fear or disgust, but Josiah sees the little man working inside Dutch's brain, all the thoughts parading clear as day across his face -- that Hosea looked pretty, of course, but it was nothing compared to Hosea every other day. That there was a female version of Hosea, right there, in the form of Sarah, and yet it was totally and completely not the same, and even from a distance he can feel that Dutch feels nothing for Sarah, not even a lick. That there was an enticing color to Hosea's lips now. Even clearer, those inartistic, primal kind of thoughts a person has.

Simply put, Dutch looks like he'd like to lay Hosea out on that stage now and take him in front of everyone.

Josiah grins.

What fun, to go home at the end of the night with a man so desired.

"Due to a grievous mistake, I've wounded an attendant of our lovely evening, and must now repay it with this form you see before you, and..."

And here, Hosea extends his hand out to Dutch, who stands, wide eyed, gripping a glass so tightly he might shatter the crystal.

"I owe him a dance, in return."

The musicians behind Hosea (sourced, of course, from their own numbers) smile conspiratorially with each other as a hubbub breaks out along the other guests. 

Dutch doesn't do much, until some of the more lively ladies (including Bessie) in attendance push him out to the now forming gap in the dance floor, stealing the drink from his hand and preening him as they go. Hosea meets him there, in the center of an open circle, the group watching with eager eyes. Hosea was _the_  known member, the trusted member, of this club.

Josiah steps behind Bessie and Sarah, who now watch with interest. Bessie and him share a smile, as if asking the other _"are you sure you're okay with this?"_

But of course they are. When Hosea looks like that, with a smile on his face... well, that's all alright.

The band readies, looking at each other with grins.

A mischievous waltz starts, and Hosea settles Dutch's hand on his now veritably-tiny waist, gently settling his own hand on the other man's broad shoulder, and clasping the other ones together.

Their words, spoken low, aren't really audible -- but Josiah gets the gist anyway: Dutch doesn't know how to waltz.

Hosea laughs, that charming laugh, and instead starts patting on Dutch's shoulder in time, moving with him.

It's kind of a funny spectacle, this gigantic young adult with the esteemed headmaster of Peoria's schooling system, who is dressed up in a fantastical woman's costume, swaying and spinning in three but not waltzing, not really.

But it also isn't funny -- not in the way that there is some real joy, some real mirth on Hosea's face, the careful way he dances, the startled laugh when Dutch twirls him under his arm, totally off-time but recklessly fun.

Josiah knows his time as Hosea's partner is coming to an end.

It doesn't hurt -- not even a little -- but he does consider telling neither Dutch nor Hosea anything, just to get another romp in, just to keep the secret parts of Hosea to himself.

And yet, when Dutch smiles roguishly, finally awake for the first time since that kiss, and tugs Hosea's arm back so they are inches, palpably inches from each other's faces --

There probably won't be any secrets he won't find out.

The crowd gathered titters, a will-they-won't-they moment. But then Hosea steps back, leading them again. Dutch is getting it quicker and quicker.

And the song ends, and they part, Dutch's fingertips lingering over the elegant nub of Hosea's wrist, and Trelawny thinks: well, if Hosea wakes up, and Dutch figures out it's significant that he's attracted to _people,_  not _women_ or _men_ , the world will have to deal with these two -- for better and for worse.


End file.
